Do Multi-Image Facebook Posts Lead to Increased Reach and Engagement?

During the past couple of months, I’ve had several people tell me of a trick they found to increase Facebook Reach using multiple images in a post. I don’t chase Reach, so I found the concept somewhat interesting, but I was skeptical.

The messages I’ve received regarding this have skyrocketed of late, so I figured it was time to pay more attention to it. So with this post I plan to do the following:

“The Trick”

The rumor goes that if you create a post with multiple images in it, you will reach far more users than if you do a typical image share. Note that this isn’t sharing a photo album, but doing a standard text share while adding images.

Let me show you how that’s done…

In the example above, you can see that this is done within the “Status” area of the publisher. Type your message and then click the camera icon to add multiple images from your desktop.

The result might look a little something like this…

The key is for the images to look presentable when uploaded together. If you post two or three images, all will be presented side-by-side within the News Feed, on your Timeline and within the permalink.

Here’s how it might look when you share three square images in the News Feed…

Reach is fine (actually, I really don’t care), but Patrick highlighted a couple of more important points: The decor page saw a 989 % increase in post clicks while the apparel page saw 870%. In each case, this happened even though fewer stories were generated.

Here are a few more success stories people shared with me…

From Michelle Goulevitch:

If you post 2 images instead of 3 its a better look in the news feed. Not only is reach up on these types of posts, but my engagement is up too (yay!).

From Dennis Meador:

Yes I post 3-4 pics at a time and get 2-3 times the reach even with same likes/comments.

Conventional FB logic says that the middle post should get much higher reach because of all the comments. But the Top post and the multiple images definitely shows that your rumor seems to be correct!

From Jose Mathias:

Have seen that actually, with a page of 4,200+ likes. Multiple images reach like 3000 while text 2000 and links around 900-1000.

From Bridget Cleary:

We’ve found the same, by posting multiple images the reach seems to have improved

From Claire Chesneau:

Yes, funnily enough I posted multiple images the other day (taken by someone else) and the reach seemed pleasantly enthusiastic. Just thought it was a one off……

My Test and Results

Okay, very convincing. But I’m always skeptical of any “tricks” to get more Reach. Word of such things spread quickly, but people often focus on the results that they want to find. And any “trick” that focuses on Reach isn’t all that interesting to me.

But the talk of an increase in engagement got my attention. So I decided to give it a whirl.

First, I created this post on my Facebook page on a Saturday afternoon…

The post did very well. It received 37 comments, 86 likes and 11 shares as of writing this blog post. The Reach was at least double what I’ve seen for a single image post lately. But most impressively, it accumulated nearly 2,000 consumptions (post clicks).

While you might guess most of these would be photo views, they were not. Only 66 were photo views while 1,861 were “other clicks.”

It’s tough to take much from this. While the post did do very well, it’s difficult to determine how much of that was due to the method of sharing and how much due to the subject matter. It got a ton of engagement, but how much of that was due to an increase in Reach? And how much of the increase in Reach was due to the added engagement?

Also, my example only scratches the surface because I used test images. This was intentional, however, since I was looking to get to the core of whether posting method mattered — I didn’t want the images themselves to influence the results.

But this test got people excited and a flurry of engagement resulted. So I can’t really take much away from this test.

Explanations for the Results

Still, I’m convinced people are seeing results. So the question is, why?

One theory is that Facebook classifies such a post as a text update, thereby giving them the typical Reach of such a post. Well, I’m getting conflicting info on that.

Within web Insights, that does appear to be the case…

The icon you see in the “Type” column is for text updates. Here’s an example of a photo…

But within the post level export, I get another story…

It’s possible that Facebook is still treating it as a text update, however, and that their systems are confused. It’s certainly a theory to consider.

There was also the possibility that Facebook was miscounting as a result of showing multiple images within the same post. For example, Facebook may have been counting the same person as a unique user when they saw the post and when they saw each individual photo.

I decided to test that with this narrowly targeted post…

Only my wife and I saw the post, confirmed also in the post level export. We both clicked into the photos multiple times as well, and that didn’t impact the reporting (also a strange tidbit: Facebook didn’t report our photo views).

There’s also the possibility that this is all very normal and natural. One photo can get a lot of engagement. Photos often get the most clicks. You add another photo (or more), and it just makes sense that such posts would receive more engagement.

The main thing with such posts is that you’re adding up the engagement of each individual photo as well as the post itself. When done appropriately, it makes a whole lot of sense that you could get a ton of engagement. And if you get a ton of engagement, the Reach should follow naturally.

Based on the reports I’ve heard from others, there’s a very real possibility that such posts are receiving more Reach than you’d expect from photo posts. What isn’t entirely clear is whether this is unnatural. Are you somehow “gaming” the system to get Reach and engagement Facebook is not intending?

My gut says no. But more testing is needed.

My Recommendations

Let me be straight with you: I hate topics like this one. I hate when someone finds a new trick to game the system, and then everyone and their moms start doing it, too.

All in the name of Reach.

You should look at this first in terms of utility: Do you think that sharing multiple images in this way will provide value? Is it something you think your fans will respond to?

That’s what I’m most curious about. And as I see how they are displayed, I think it’s entirely possible that this could be a very effective way to share content with my audience.

Quick Tip: In my test, I only used square images that were 1200×1200 pixels. Facebook appeared to crop out the outer 5px or so, but kept each image square.

I plan on experimenting with it. I recommend you do the same. But when you do, make sure you look beyond the metric of Reach. Does it lead to more engagement? More stories? More website traffic? More sales?

When you report back to me, please focus on these things.

How About You?

Have you experimented with this technique? What results are you seeing?

About Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer is a digital marketing consultant with a unique perspective on social media. He was introduced to Facebook in 2007 while with the NBA (back before Pages) and has been using Facebook for business ever since. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Jon Loomer Digital).

http://www.c4compete.com/ Chloe Forbes-Kindlen

Great read! I tried this out last week. I had shared 6 tips, all under one theme with pretty high reach individually. Then I tried sharing them all together like this but my reach with something like 12 – the lowest I’ve ever had and I only got one like. This was just a test, planning to do some more testing but this article was really helpful in explaining all the different possibilities. Thank you Jon :-)

http://www.wisemetrics.com/ Stephane Allard

Hi Jon, yes we’ve experienced the same thing.
The reason behind such a good performance seems to come from Engagement volume. The more pictures you add, the more engagement you can generate. Indeed, a single Facebook user could click on each of your 4 pictures, thus generating 4 engagement actions credited to your single post.
Thus, Facebook’s algorithm analyses that your post generates 3 or 4 times more engagement than your other posts.

Karen Borga

Hi Jon, I have an online store and post products constantly. This very well may be a solution for my company. We have post two or three products at once and get them seen more without paying for post promotion which really doesn’t seem to be boosting conversion. Will give it a try today.

Dennis, ListsUK

Interesting post, thanks Jon.

Might help your testing & analysis if instead of using multiple images (or lots of orange squares!), you try slicing one image into 4, as that way when it appears in a feed, it presumably would be less likely to result in more interaction through people clicking through the different photos… (or not?!).

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

My photos received very interaction in this test, so I think that part of the test was clean. The issue was with the engagement due to subject matter, making my results not particularly valuable!

Dennis, ListsUK

Ok, excuse the stupid question, but if companies’ posts are getting to less and less of their audience (I know, we shouldn’t carp on about reach, but under the circumstances..! ;) couldn’t you post the same content twice – once with a single image and the other with multiple images; if Facebook’s treating the multiple-image post as ‘text’, maybe it will consider it sufficiently different and you’ll be able to see which gets the better interaction… I’d try it, but got a feeling the numbers on your site might make it a bit more of an accurate test ;)

gnir

Yes!! This is happening to us, too! The reason our reach is higher is that engagement is through the roof. I was wondering if engagement was higher because they were clicking on the (smaller) photos to see them full size ? I don’t think Facebook is giving these posts a higher % of reach because they are classified as “text” . I think it has something to do with the huge engagement that these posts bring. We’re talking about over 5K engagement but yet less than 1K of Likes, Comments, Shares. Yet, the Reach is not as high as for single photo posts that have a much higher Likes/Shares/Comments but about half the Engagement of the two-photo posts. For us, it does not lead to more Likes/Comments/Shares at all… just a higher Engagement and a higher Reach for the amount of Likes/Comments/Shares. For the company I work for Reach is very important… critical. We want our name in front of potential customers (retail e-commerce site). For us, Reach is “it” … Not total reach but reach to fans as they are the ones who fit the demographic we need to convert these folks to customers and to engage with them, etc. .

Patrick C

Jon, thanks for the mention & link to my study! Really appreciate your thoughts & analysis, as well. One thing, while I understand your point about not liking the “tricks” people often seek out and employ to “game the system,” I’d argue that this is no such trick. However, at the end of the day, I guess it depends on how the tactic is used — but here’s what I mean (from the conclusion in our analysis):
“At the end of the day, there are no shortcuts around the need to create good content. The above strategies are only meant as a means to ensure that the rich, engaging and relevant content which you create is getting that extra push of Organic Fan Reach. The engine that filters the Facebook News Feed will forever be changing, and while Loomer’s battle cry “Bottom Line: Don’t Chase an Algorithm” is sage advice, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experiment with strategies to optimize the sharability and reach of your excellent content once you’ve created it.”

Thanks again for this (and all your great data driven analysis)!

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

We’re on the same page, Patrick. My concern is that people approach this the wrong way — that they use it as a trick to game the system. Also, my theory at this point is that it’s not really gaming anything. The added engagement and reach are natural because it’s an engaging way to share content — but that will also depend both on the copy and imagery used (as always).

http://www.robertlyon.org/ Robert A Lyon

I saw your test post on Saturday, so on Sunday I decided to try it out myself. Reach was at the higher end, and I noticed in the first few minutes the reach got up there (in relative terms, my page is tiny) significantly faster than usual. However I should also note that I also had just discovered the feature showing when fans are online (through one of your other posts, thanks) so I can’t say for sure whether this also played a role. I don’t know how you’d measure engagement, but if we say engagement=(clicks+likes+shares+comments)/reach then I didn’t see higher engagement. Using that formula, going back a few posts starting with the double photo post in question, I saw 19.69%, 29.55%, 10.26%, 28.55%, 8.70%, and 18.64% respectively.

I am going to keep experimenting. Is that an okay quantitative method to measure engagement, or is there a better way?

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

I’d measure engagement rate as (Engaged Users)/(Users Reached). You can get the Engaged Users metric from your post level export.

Rita Bosico

Our page is for a non-profit RADIO station, but I keep tabs on our peers and pros to see their methods, like… RADIO DISNEY. For ‘years’ they have used ONE PICTURE with several images contained in it. Images are faces and they create a popularity question (‘Who are your favorites”, “Here are the nominees for the Academy Award”) or a trivia question (“Who was in the movie ‘Never Say Never’). The faces were of singers and actors in their target teen audience (Bieber, Disney movie actors) and the results were ALWAYS astronomical. But as far as I can remember, it was 1 picture with 3 or4 images in it (and each image had a label A, B, C, or numbered). Here’s a sample:

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Pretty sure I know what you’re talking about, and this is actually an album of multiple images that look like one when they are shared together. It’s a nifty trick that’s been around for a while.

Rita Bosico

Here is the picture I mentioned about how RADIO DISNEY does their posts

Rita Bosico

3rd Time’s a charm, maybe? Let’s see if the picture attaches now. Otherwise…. on FB, check out /radiodisney (We’re The Gospel Station, by the way).

Bryan Caporicci

Would be interested to see the reach on a multi-image text post vs an album.

http://pulseofcentralflorida.com Ashley K. Edwards

That’s exactly what I’m interested in as well. Or even, multi-image post vs. album vs. collage.

http://randipierce.com/ Randi Pierce

Appreciate your time in testing these tricks :) I am naturally skeptical as well, so naturally appreciate the feedback before I spend time investing in it. Will still try this, with a theme to engage, and let you know if I see a big result. Thanks again!

Guest

I just wrote a post on my Page outlining a trick that should result in the same engagement as posting a single image. Based on the reach and engagement so far, it seems that my theory was correct.

Peter K from the Milky Way

Jon, the idea that photos get more engagement and shared more often is probably due to the presence of photo memes. They aren’t traditional photos, as brands know them. Our radio station has great success with both engagement and reach when we have memes that are shared. But when it’s just a regular pic, ? Ho hum. Share a meme on your page, then share a regular photo from your day at the office or something that you think is interesting to your fans. No explanation, no caveat, see what happens…

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

But have you tried this method of sharing multiple images at once, Peter?

Peter K from the Milky Way

We have, with very little difference from a photo alone, or a photo/link. We don’t share many multiple photos, because we have a website that we’re funneling traffic to. When we share 2 at a time, we put the gallery on a webpage, using the FB photos as a tease to the greater amount of content at the website. Very little beats the text status only. We generate anywhere from 500- 1200 reach and varied interaction, depending on the question or comment. By far we get much more engagement and reach with memes. Usually beats text status only. I think memes are skewing the data we’re seeing from sources.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Yeah, I don’t plan to use this method much for driving traffic. The times I’ll experiment most with it will be for pure engagement.

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

I noticed this a while ago on my Page and the extra reach is nice but they don’t get anywhere near the engagement a single image post does because they don’t stand out as nice and they look took much like an album post.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

If that’s the case, Hugh, there’s definitely nothing to see here. Something I’ll be testing just in case.

http://www.socialidentities.com Hugh Briss

I just wrote a post on my Page explaining a trick that should result in the same engagement as posting a single image. Based on the reach and engagement so far, it seems that my theory was correct.

Hi Jon, This is great news for marketers with Facebook cutting back on their organic reach. It will defiantly allow marketers to get more value out of their fans. It will be interesting to see if Facebook ‘patch’ this loophole, in an attempt to get more marketers to pay for ads and generate more revenue

http://www.kevinmullett.com Kevin Mullett

Jon, what I’m seeing with one client that has been doing multi-image posts for a while, may offer some insight or confuse this issue further. Single images seem to have gone down further in reach, multi-image posts didn’t go up.

This client’s best single image posts early to mid 2013 were getting roughly 10% less then multi-photo posts, and neither were as good as text only. Fast forward to current day and single images are now half what a multi-photo post gets.

The multi-image boost actually dates all the way back to when @hughbriss:disqus and I independently discovered the text only algo change. I actually mentioned “Post multiple photos into a gallery, when applicable, instead of just one picture.” on my AllFacebook post on November 7, 2012.

All of the following were at roughly the same time of day and end of game conditions.
— Jan 12th text only, 466 likes, 30 comments, 20 shares, 5814 reach (of 8114).
— Jan 10th text only, almost identical to above.
— Jan 3rd single photo, 267 likes, 9 comments, 18 shares, 3912 reach. (Most single image posts are much lower.)
— Nov 16th multi-photo (2), 330 likes, 14 comments, 19 shares, 6284 reach. (*Most recent multi-photo that is under similar conditions and timing.)
— All link posts are sub 2k reach.
— Unfortunately I don’t have a current video post example under the same circumstances, but one from March 16th yielded, 272 likes, 22 comments, 45 shares, and 12,603 reach.

Now this is just one client, of one type of course, but clearly there is a difference of reach. Engagement and CTR are for a different day. One more interesting stat. Cover photo changes routinely yielded roughly 150 likes, 5-10 comments, 1 share (maybe), with a reach of sub 200’s. Yeah, hundreds. Sorry, this is almost a blog post.

Guest

Rant ahead warning!

I will probably regret this comment. But I’m hearing a lot of other solo business owners coming from the same place I am – we are fed up. Links get the most reach. No, links with photos get more engagement. Wait – text-only posts are best. Every time we turn around, the “rules” are changing. And I’m definitely not for gaming the system – but when what worked 2 weeks ago (and for months before that) suddenly stops working, I’m ready to throw in the towel. I was all geared up to take your Power Editor course, Jon, and start running ads again – but then I remember my Facebook ad experience of last year, where over the course of 2 months, running an ad campaign that Facebook helped me create, my cost per like went up over 50%. Why would I want to run ads (to get engagement, conversions, etc.) if the only thing I can be sure of is that the price is going to keep going up??

I understand that as more people use Facebook, and there are more advertisers, there is less space in the newsfeed. But – I see certain ads over and over again. I see some posts 2-3 times over the course of a day (not sponsored/promoted). I’m not engaging with either, and yet FB is shoving them in my face. That means that the stuff I want to see, I either need to scroll a lot, or manipulate my feed using lists. Which for the average user (my audience) is just too much work!

My personal profile posts get a ton more engagement than anything I do on my page. I’ve even started cross-posting nearly everything from my page, and the exact same content gets way more engagement on my profile than it does on my page. (Maybe because FB is shoving my profile posts in my friends’ faces more often.)

I also wonder – once you lose engagement (say, you take a holiday), what will it take to get it back? Or, for instance, one of my best strategies (thanks Jon) is post a link but upload a unique image – hasn’t been working for several days (in multiple browsers). I understand FB bugs. But the lack of that engaging content is causing my reach/engagement on other types of posts to drop too. A lot.

P.S.–I have a post from 3 days ago that got 25% engagement. Sounds great, right? Until I tell you the reach was a grand total of 24. Engagement is important – but if your reach is in the toilet, no amount of great engagement is going to make a hill of beans difference in the results.

/rant

David A Haines

As with anything, it’s not the “Trick” that gets increases the engagement, it’s the content. Post 2 crappy pictures that nobody wants to see, your engagement sucks. Post 2 interesting pictures and depending on who sees them, shares them, and likes them your engagement will go up. Personally I don’t put much stock in tricks and trying to game the system. Be interesting. Be inspiring. Be real. That’s your best gauge of engagement.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Indeed!

Nikki Kanzlemar

Great testing Jon, very informative. A friend of mine was seeing HUGE results from this, which her online shoe business was benefiting from greatly, over the past couple of weeks… But just last night, the feature no longer worked. The images would just post, without the status… She had to go back to each image and apply the status to each in order for it to show up as it used to (as per your above article). Which is just not worth the effort, especially when she sometimes had up to 9 images (she discovered that they seemed to work best in 3’s… 3, 6 or 9 images).

So it seems that either way, Facebook are onto it and perhaps making it no longer possible to do this. Bugger, I would have really liked to test it through a few more of my clients pages, but as you say, do it right and you shouldn’t need to ‘game the system’. Love your work as always Jon!! :)

Sarah Pinnix

Brilliant testing. We have seen increased engagement, which is natural if there is more than one piece of content to engage with. But we also saw more website traffic and donations during our December campaign, so we are convinced it’s a good strategy. But I think you’re right, it’s not gaming the system, it’s common sense. The key is not to do this on EVERY post! We find one thing that works, and pound it to death until our audiences stop paying attention!

Sarah Pinnix

That last “we” is the collective “we.” :)

http://pulseofcentralflorida.com Ashley K. Edwards

I guess my ask would be, does it make a difference if the multi-photo approach is activated via individually uploaded pics through the status update function (as you’ve demonstrated above)? Or by way of creating a photo collage through a tool (e.g., picmonkey) or even something you create in Photoshop.

Kimberly Misher

Hi Jon!
Haven’t read through the comments, so apologize if this has been raised. If your suspicions on obvious reasons why multiple picture posts would garner more reach and engagement are correct, an interesting experiment would be to:
A. Post a multi-photo update
B. Post individual updates corresponding to the multiple photos
And then add up the numbers on the individual updates and see how it corresponds to a multi-photo update. That might inform the “is this better” question a bit more.

I’ve been doing this since the new format to adding pictures. You don’t think Facebook is going to close this loophole once others “figure it out?” This is old news, and I wish everyone would just shut up.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

This isn’t necessarily a loophole. It’s quite possible that it’s just a matter of providing good content that people enjoy engaging with. And I’m sure that’s something Facebook could get behind.

Malcolm Scott

Hey Jon, Thanks for all the free stuff!

I’ve been subscribed for a few months and using FB advertising for about 4 years. the first 3 years and 6 months were pretty poor – got some reasonable results but nothing special. Your advice has certainly helped me to get better results.

I’ve had good results (CTR up to 7% with a CPC of 6p/9c) but my latest post with multiple images yielded the following numbers over 12 days:

I tried posting multiple images a few days ago and got some pretty astounding results. My client is a specialist jeweller supplying wedding rings. They meet customers at home and make the rings to order. They cover the whole of the UK and Ireland.

The only thing that was different from most of my posts is that I used multiple images.

I’ll keep experimenting but I’m pretty pleased with the results so far.

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

Hey, Malcom. Also curious what your goal was of the post. What was the cost per (that) action?

http://www.antoniocalero.com/ Antonio Calero

I love it when you get nerdy with so many tests and analysis that will bore many of us…so big thank you for your time! I hear so many tricks and stories (not just for Facebook, but also Twitter, Google…) that I simply cannot spent time confirming most of them. And besides, as you have mentioned many times, if your only strategy is tricking the system… well, that’s really sad.

If people spent less time trying to find ways to cheat – most times for the sake of Reach – and use that time to create good content, the results would come by themselves…

http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

You’ve got it, Antonio!

Spiffsin

I work hard to create good content, but that hasn’t stopped our reach from dropping 50% on some of our posts. As a result, our post likes are dropping, and less people are clicking through to our website. When you’re working in a system, like Facebook, which only shows your content to a tiny portion of the people that like your page, (in our case we have 51K likes and yet some of our posts are only being seen by 4K people while others get seen by 11K) I don’t consider it “cheating” the system – the system is already cheating us. It’s about trying to survive and get the biggest return possible on each post from a system that’s stacked against you.

http://www.antoniocalero.com/ Antonio Calero

That’s a valid point @spiffsin:disqus, I totally understand your frustrations. However many times people blame on Facebook when the fact that your content doesn’t Reach all your followers is not unique to this platform, nor to the online world. How many subscribers to a printed magazine read all the articles contained in it? and more specifically: how many of your Google+, Twitter, etc… followers receive your posts? The difference is, in these platforms we don’t have accurate analytics to find this info, that’s why people don’t get upset with them.

http://www.shop.graciousstore.com/ Gracious Store

Why do people seem to “like” this method of sharing pictures than the “traditional way”. Is it because they are are trilled by the way the pictures are displayed or because it is a better method used in communicating the same message to them

A.

Does your reach expand when people who are engaging with your page are not fans of it?

http://www.FetchResponse.com/ Roxann Souci

Great Jon! I always come away on fire from your articles. Can’t wait to try this out. It seems like FB offers challenge after challenge for businesses. I’ve been experimenting with Promoted Posts vs FB ads, and that’s its own little laboratory.

Rodrigo Ruiz Orozco

Hey there! do you know if there’s a tool or software that do it automatically? thank you!

http://www.bringsbrand.com Bringsbrand

Hi, Jon, I have this FB cheat sheet infographic based on your research here. Do check it out and leave a cent or two. Appreciate that… it’s is my first piece of try. TQ! http://bit.ly/1DGdZNV

http://www.sscsworld.com/ Akash Agarwal

Great post! Very well explained and hope for the best. Thanks for sharing.